Musings and rants of a middle school teacher out to save the world, one student at a time...

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

All I Want is a Good Night's Sleep

I never seem to get enough sleep. This isn't anything new. There's just never enough hours in the day to do all the things I need - and want - to do. There's school, but after that, there's the gym, the errands that need to be run (allergy shots, the market, trips to the post office, the chiropractor, etc), then on home for supper which I make, we eat, and I clean up. Then laundry, checking email (and hopefully blogging) and grading papers and cleaning house and on and on and on. If I'm lucky I can get some reading in and some knitting as well.

And I don't even have my own kids, or it would be worse.

One of my students today said he was doing a survey of what video game system each of his teachers owned and wanted to know which one I had.

"None," I said. "We don't have one."

The whole class gasped in shock. What? Someone without a video game system?

"Really? Not one?"

"Not one," I replied.

"What do you do?" he asked again. The kids all looked at me, wide-eyed. Really? What does one do without video games?

"Oh, I run errands. I cook dinner. I do laundry, I play with my cats, I talk with my husband, I read (this brought some looks of sheer horror to some of their faces), I watch movies, or the news, or History Channel, I knit, I do all sorts of things."

And as I said this, I realized that if I didn't have so darn much to do, it would, just maybe, be possible to get something like eight hours' sleep at night. A video game system would just cut into precious sleep time.

And I need my sleep time.

It seems that most of The Team, as well as most of the other Seventh Grade Teachers are suffering from sleep deprivation this week. Part of it is coming back off two glorious weeks where we could, for the most part, sleep all we want. I celebrated by taking naps on the couch with a warm cat or two for company. It was delightful. However, now we're back here at school, with most of us getting up at 5:00 am or so, and our minds are now fully engaged with all the drama and pathos that is Middle School.

Which is why, we discovered, most of us are waking up in the middle of the night and find that we can't go back to sleep.

For the past three nights I've awakened around 2:30 or 3:00 am and found that I can't go back to sleep. My mind just won't shut off. I try not to think of anything outside of pleasant sleepy thoughts, but my mind drifts off to thinking about an upcoming lesson, how we're going to handle our homework slackers this semester, things I need to do for a team meeting, and on and on.

Very funny. I have a Nintendo Wii and I still find time to read. I had to go to dictionary.com to find out what the word 'sleep' meant though. Now I know what my students do when their eyes are shut and their heads are on their desks! And here I thought that they were just thinking really hard!

Don't have a clue how old you and your cohorts are ut you might think "hormones". In my mid 40s I had sleep issues and it was menopause!! Too much information? Also you might try one or two Advil PMs, you'll sleep like the dead!